Romania Literature – From the 20th Century to the Beginning of the 21st Century
The 20th century it opened onto a well-defined literary landscape, the movements set in the previous century were ‘recovered’ in the modern sense. With the ideologues of this current, A. Vlahuță, G. Coșbuc, N. Iorga, who placed the recovery of the rural world at the center of their reflection, the village became an emblem of Romanian spirituality, a privileged place where it would most fully manifest itself. national specific ‘. Many poets and prose writers collaborated in Sămănătorul (“The sower”, 1901), the magazine that gave its name to the current: P. Cerna, Ș. Iosif, I. Agârbiceanu, E. Gârleanu, M. Sadoveanu. This movement was opposed by the writers and poets gathered around the magazine Viața românească, founded in 1906 by C. Stere, P. Bujor and the literary critic G. Ibrăileanu. The premises of the critical position of Ibrăileanu, ideologue of the group, coincided in part with those of Sămănătorul. The recovery of the rural tradition, however, was not used as a literary motif for idyllic and picturesque descriptions of village life, but represented the fulcrum for a critique, in a social sense, of the living conditions of the peasants. Among the members of the Viața românească group were N. Gane, D. Anghel, IA Brătescu-Voinești, O. Goga, G. Galaction.
● According to indexdotcom, the interwar period coincided with a particularly fruitful moment in literary history: original currents arose, especially in poetry, but in a relationship of interaction with contemporary European movements. The thematic-stylistic richness does not allow the individual authors to be included in well-defined currents or movements, although two fundamental guidelines can be identified, which in part continue the contrast between tradition and modernity, born at the end of the nineteenth century. This contrast, however, is canceled out, for example, in the work of T. Arghezi, where traditional themes are expressed in an absolutely modern language. They belong to the traditionalist current, gathered around the magazine Gîndirea (“Il Pensiero “, 1921), hence the name of the movement, Gîndirismo, prose writers and poets who identify in the values of the native tradition and in orthodoxy the main character of the Romanian culture: N. Crainic, I. Pillat, V. Voiculescu, L. Blaga. The modernist current, whose ideologue will be the critic E. Lovinescu, clearly and immediately expressed the originality achieved by Romanian literature, above all in the technical-formal research. Avant-garde movements such as surrealism and Dadaism received highly original contributions from authors such as T. Tzara, I. Vinea, S. Pa; nă, I. Voronca, B. Fundoianu, Urmuz. The prose also attests to the presence of more current genres. This is the case of the novel of psychological introspection by H. Papadat-Bengescu, M. Caragiale, C. Petrescu or the novel of historical-social inspiration by L. Rebreanu. It belongs to the period immediately preceding the Second World War a part of G. Călinescu’s prose production.
● The immediate postwar period, with the division of Europe into opposing blocs and the positioning of the Romania in the area of socialist influence, was characterized by the capillary interference of political power in every social sphere: consequently, culture was forced to a rigid alignment with the directives imposed by the regime. However, starting from the end of the 1950s, literature managed, at least in part, to escape the most markedly committed indications. In poetry, we note the work of M. Isanos, AE Baconsky, N. Cassian, D. Deșliu, M. Beniuc; in prose, in addition to Călinescu’s novels of maturity, a place of absolute importance is occupied by the production of M. Preda. Between the years 1960 and 1970 there was a total renewal, also thanks to the verses of N. Labiş and other poets such as N. Stănescu, M. Sorescu, I. Alexandru, C. Baltag, M. Ivănescu. In this period, moreover, that particular genre that is oneirism was established, whose most important representatives were D. Țepeneag (in France since 1975 and active with a production in both Romanian and French: Hotel Europa, 1996; La belle Roumaine, 2004), V. Mazilescu, L. Dimov. In prose, C. Țoiu, I. Lancrănjan, A. Ivasiuc, N. Breban, A. Buzura, G. Adameșteanu, E. Uricaru established themselves. The poets who, during the darkest decades of the communist regime (1970-89), managed to oppose censorship belong, at least chronologically, to this generation: A. Blandiana, I. Mălăncioiu, G. Melinescu, C. Buzea, M. Dinescu.
● At the beginning of the 1980s a group of poets made their debut, united by the definitions of optezciști (“those of the Eighties”) or poets in blue jeans, who advocate the overcoming of now conventional literary canons, to impose a postmodern poetic language (T. Coșovei, F. Iaru, I. Stratan, M. Cărtărescu, IB Lefter). In prose, a similar renewal is found in the work of B. Horosangian, S. Agopian, M. Nedelciu.
● Following the fall of the Ceauşescu regime, a sort of upheaval occurs in the way of understanding and doing literature: the end of censorship pushes us to abandon the metaphor and symbolism that, for almost half a century, had characterized artistic writing. The absolutely innovative element is the relationship that is established between literary text and multimedia technologies. The definition of mediatic textualism is elaborated: the artistic product is born from the mixture of different tools and genres (computer, virtual reality, Internet, cybernetic and visual art).
